Chile's Lagos says he made Pinochet's list

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Chile's Lagos says he made Pinochet's list<br><br>THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br><br><br>SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said Friday that he was put on a list of dissidents marked for assassination two decades ago by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's secret police after an unsuccessful assassination attempt against the then dictator.<br><br>Lagos commented after the newspaper Diario Siete and the Web news site El Mostrador reported that two former agents of the feared secret police had confessed to killing journalist Jose Carrasco as part of reprisals for the attack that killed five Pinochet bodyguards Sept. 4, 1986.<br><br>Ex-agents Ivan Quiroz and Jorge Vargas reportedly told a judge they were ordered to avenge the attack by killing dissidents, including Carrasco.<br><br>Four people in all were eventually slain, but the target list also had included Lagos - at the time a leading Pinochet opponent, they reportedly said.<br><br>"Yes, we had the information about that," Lagos told reporters, saying he happened to be under arrest by the regular police at the time, so he was not home when secret service agents came looking for him.<br><br>"I am sorry that the detectives detained me but were not on time to detain Jose Carrasco," Lagos said. "Otherwise Carrasco would still be alive."<br><br>The reporter's bullet-riddled body was found near a cemetery the day after the assassination attempt.<br><br>Interior Minister Francisco Vidal, a close fiend of Lagos, said the president had discussed the case with associates previously.<br><br>"The president has told us many times that he was surprised that night when the detectives entered his room and aimed at him and his wife with submachine guns, and told him that he was lucky that they had arrived there first," Vidal said.<br><br>The Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, a pro-communist guerrilla group, took responsibility for the 1986 attack on Pinochet in the Andes foothills southwest of Santiago. After the attack, Pinochet's regime declared a state of emergency and arrested dozens of dissidents.<br><br>Pinochet seized power in a bloody 1973 coup against leftist President Salvador Allende and ruled until 1990. A later Truth Commission inquiry found that 3,197 people were killed or "disappeared" for political reasons during his regime.<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1102AP_Chile_President.html">seattlepi.nwsource.com/na...ident.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>